(review) Cockney Rejects – Power Grab

Sons of East London, legendary Cockney Rejects are back with new full length album. I must admit that I have never been a big fan of this band, but I did not pay attention to their albums, apart of few anthems that everybody knew from Oi compilations. Well, the new album is here. There are fourteen songs on this one, celebrating 40 years of being undefeated and other merry street punk themes like being stabbed in the back, not having your heart in the scene, fighting if attacked, celebrating life and living every day like there is no tomorrow…Lyrics are great because I always love such themes in punk and hardcore bands. But, music is another thing. There are couple of songs that stand out as highlights, like Paper Tiger, Stab In The Back or my personal favorite being My Heart Ain´t In It. But, other is just too hard rock, with couple of nwobhm influenced guitar songwriting. Melodies are okay in some choruses but I never quite liked hard rock influenced punk, so this one could have been much better than it really is. At the end of the album there is a cover of Tom Petty´s Learning To Fly sounding practically same as original. There are more songs that somehow passed under my radar as fillers than anthems. Okay album but nothing special.